She considered his face.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “I have known men with names, but known them no better for them. This will be in the nature of an experiment....”
“If ever,” she said, “you should see my eyes searching for a word, you will tell me your name. That will be the word I need.” And she smiled faintly at his absorbed face, and with a slight shake the chinchilla coat dropped off her to the floor, soft and shining silver about her feet, and she was a woman in a black sequin dress cut low about her throat and severely distant from her arms. Somewhere about the shining black was a splash of vivid green, maybe it was about its middle: just a little splash of vivid green on the shining black dress....
“Come,” she said again. And he followed Pamela Star across the room to double-doors at a far end. She laid her hands on the two knobs, as though dramatically to swing the doors open; but instead, as she stood thus against the dark panel of the door, she suddenly threw her head backwards to him with an adorable gesture, and she said:—
“You are my newest friend—and here is my oldest and my best!”
And Pamela Star threw open the doors to introduce her newest friend to her oldest, a dead man laid out on a great couch in the serene light of two tall candles, at its head, in two tall candlesticks of barbaric design in dull and twisted gold.
“That’s how he wished it,” she whispered.
They stood, the two young people, even as straight as the two candlesticks of the dead old man’s desire, in the open doorway: Ivor staring in wonder, and she in deep thoughtfulness, at the still and bearded figure on the great couch. Her oldest and best friend! And she, beside him in the doorway, was as still as the dead....
3
They stood facing one another on each side of the figure on the great couch, he staring down in wonder and she in thought; and the calm light of the two candles shone softly on her hair, so that red and gold and bronze danced on the waves and magic shades chased magic shadows in the depths.